DefinePlugin

The DefinePlugin allows you to create global constants which can be configured at compile time. This can be useful for allowing different behavior between development builds and release builds. If you perform logging in your development build but not in the release build you might use a global constant to determine whether logging takes place. That's where DefinePlugin shines, set it and forget it rules for development and release builds.

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  // Definitions...
});

Usage

Each key passed into DefinePlugin is an identifier or multiple identifiers joined with ..

• If the value is a string it will be used as a code fragment.
• If the value isn't a string, it will be stringified (including functions).
• If the value is an object all keys are defined the same way.
• If you prefix typeof to the key, it's only defined for typeof calls.

The values will be inlined into the code allowing a minification pass to remove the redundant conditional.

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  PRODUCTION: JSON.stringify(true),
  VERSION: JSON.stringify('5fa3b9'),
  BROWSER_SUPPORTS_HTML5: true,
  TWO: '1+1',
  'typeof window': JSON.stringify('object'),
  'process.env': {
    NODE_ENV: JSON.stringify(process.env.NODE_ENV)
  }
});

console.log('Running App version ' + VERSION);
if(!BROWSER_SUPPORTS_HTML5) require('html5shiv');

Note that because the plugin does a direct text replacement, the value given to it must include actual quotes inside of the string itself. Typically, this is done either with alternate quotes, such as '"production"', or by using JSON.stringify('production').

index.js

if (!PRODUCTION) {
  console.log('Debug info');
}

if (PRODUCTION) {
  console.log('Production log');
}

After passing through webpack with no minification results in:

if (!true) {
  console.log('Debug info');
}
if (true) {
  console.log('Production log');
}

and then after a minification pass results in:

console.log('Production log');

Feature Flags

Enable/disable features in production/development build using feature flags.

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  'NICE_FEATURE': JSON.stringify(true),
  'EXPERIMENTAL_FEATURE': JSON.stringify(false)
});

When defining values for process prefer 'process.env.NODE_ENV': JSON.stringify('production') over process: { env: { NODE_ENV: JSON.stringify('production') } }. Using the latter will overwrite the process object which can break compatibility with some modules that expect other values on the process object to be defined.

Service URLs

Use a different service URL in production/development builds:

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  'SERVICE_URL': JSON.stringify('http://dev.example.com')
});